Comparing Ted Cruz to a vampire is out; comparing Hilary Clinton to the anti-Christ is in. Saying that Susan Collins is ignorant is out; saying that Rachel Maddow looks like Justin Bieber and should wear a necklace is in. Calling Mitch McConnell Lord Voldemort is out; calling Mitt Romney a pompous ass is in. Yes indeed, the hierarchy of vituperation has been reordered by those mavens of interpersonal communication known as the United States Senate.
Those outs came from Neera Tanden, the vanquished Biden nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget. The ins were from the mouths and Twitter fingers of, in the first two instances, Trump cabinet nominees confirmed by the Senate and, in the “pompous ass” example, from Trump himself, without a modicum of senatorial concern over decorum.
All of those phrases exemplify disparagement through invective. Such quips among like-minded folks may help reduce stress and win laughs. Viewed more widely, however, most linguists and conflict resolution experts will tell you that they are not conducive to crafting agreement among various factions (here, here and here).
Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, the Tanden confirmation battle totally evaded a serious – and long overdue – discussion about the role of civil discourse in governance. Instead, we got a Don Rickles cage fight over whose insults were the worst.
Conservatives insisted that Tanden’s abrasive tweets disqualified her for the job because she insulted so many congressional leaders. Liberals trotted out a database of Trump’s 10,000 insults, along with impertinent slams from the former president’s cabinet nominees blessed by the Senate.
Although she may well have been less offensive than her Republican counterparts, Tanden lost her confirmation battle over the slings and arrows of a churlish Twitter feed. In terms of distributive justice, the outcome was less than fair. Others have said far worse and suffered no penalty.
Yet, the saddest part of this whole episode is that it ended without any discussion, or even recognition, of the rampant degradation of political speech. When our leaders routinely go for the jugular and deny or demean the humanity of partisan adversaries, they set the stage for the rest of the country. That’s why, according to recent polling, 93 percent of respondents think incivility is a problem, and 68 percent see it as a crisis.
The problem reaches far beyond the beltway. A Democratic state legislator in New York tweeted this to a Republican staffer during the week before Christmas: “Kill yourself.” A Republican official in Kansas took out over an American Indian running for Congress with this Facebook post: “Your radical socialist kick boxing lesbian Indian will be sent back packing to the reservation.”
Then there is this tweet, from a Democrat running for Congress in North Carolina: “Screw they go low, we go high bullshit. When (GOP) extremists go low, we stomp their scrawny pasty necks with our heels and once you hear the sound of a crisp snap you grind you heel hard and twist it slowly side to side for good measure. He needs to know who whupped his ass.”
Apologists for this kind of toxic invective by political leaders are quick to note that the tradition dates back to the early days of the republic. Thomas Jefferson reportedly called John Adams a “repulsive pedant” and a “hideous hermaphroditical character.” Adams supposedly called Jefferson “the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.” However, without social media or cable television, Jefferson and Adams could hack away at each other all day without the rest of the country knowing about it. Like the proverbial tree falling in the forest, a diabolical insult needs to be heard in order to do damage.
And that is precisely what is happening now. Incivility, according to numerous studies, is contagious (here, here and here). Many otherwise genteel folks hear and read the gushing vitriol of their leaders, and then slowly amp up their own tone and volume when talking about politics. Suddenly Thanksgiving dinner turns into a verbal Battle of the Bulge.
Even more insidious, however, is that vitriolic political rhetoric is seen by many experts as a serious threat to our democracy. Jeremy Frimer is a University of Winnipeg professor who studies the weaponization of incivility in politics. Here’s what he wrote: “Incivility can create a sense that subjugating the rights of a political party is both justified and necessary, and thus leads to democratic collapse.”
Think back on the political messages floating around this past year. How many times have Republican leaders used the term “socialist” to describe Democrats? How many times have Democratic leaders used the term “racist” to describe Republicans? In our world of endless metrics, it is remarkable nobody kept track. Yet, a pollster tried to measure the impact of those pitches. The result? Eight of ten Republicans believe the Democratic party has been taken over by socialists, while 8 in 10 Democrats believe the GOP has been taken over by racists. Add to that a “stolen election”, one imaginary and the other attempted-but-real, and you will have the perfect case study of how incivility can take us to the brink of insurrection.
That’s why one-third of Americans who identify as Democrat or Republican believe that violence could be justified to advance their parties’ objectives. That’s why our Capitol is currently surrounded by National Guard troops and razor wire-topped fencing.
I have no doubt that Neera Tanden would have made an excellent OMB director. Her apologies for the mean tweets were sincere and unqualified, (an object lesson for Andrew Cuomo). Pardon my wishful thinking, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if this whole sad episode turned into one of those infrequent aha moments? There are, of course, far better reasons for our leaders to lay off the name-calling. But if losing out on a Cabinet-level position gets some pols to dial it back a bit, so be it. Whatever it takes. Inertia is a potent force, but we Americans have changed directions many times in our history. It’s time to do it again.
Before it’s too late.